Area Opinions

Crash raises questions to be answered

The county line that separates Goliad County and Bee County is 869 miles north of Mexico City and 1,572 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.

This past Sunday, however, a lonely spot between Goliad and Beeville on US 59 became ground zero for the issue of immigration reform between the United States and Mexico.

A pickup truck carrying 23 suspected illegal immigrants blew a tire, careened off the road, and slammed into a tree. Fifteen passengers died as a result, in what one observer called the “the worst single motor vehicle accident I’ve ever seen.”

Immigration reform must have at its heart a strong, shared commitment between the U.S. and Mexico to apprehend and prosecute human traffickers with vigor.

We ache for the families and friends of the people who died in this tragedy.

We suffer for the community of law enforcement and medical personnel who have been scarred as witnesses to this carnage.

We beg for resolution of the core issues that created this heartbreaking calamity.

The Victoria Advocate

Bearing arms and expecting to be safe

In America, is it more important that a 24-year-old be able to buy an AR-15 weapon and unlimited rounds of ammo — or that a 6-year-old girl be able to go to the movies with her mom and return home safely?

After the shootings in Aurora, Colo., that killed 12 people, including 6-year-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, and injured dozens of others, the answer might seem obvious. But it’s as complicated as any balancing of rights that are competing for top priority.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, those unalienable rights listed in the Declaration of Independence, surely include an expectation of safety in public places.

Those who read the Second Amendment will just as surely argue liberty means freedom from undue interference with gun-ownership rights.

Should the Second Amendment allow a man to freely buy weapons, ammunition, body armor or other products, some of which have little purpose other than to cause destruction and panic?

To ask the question is not to answer it, though.

To ask it is to recognize that protecting rights and freedoms requires an ongoing debate about where one person’s freedom ends and another’s begins.